Buffalo Plane Crash Kills 49

A Continental Express flight from Newark crashed into a home in the suburbs near its destination of Buffalo. All 48 people on the plane were killed, plus one on the ground.

Twelve neighboring homes were evacuated as firefighters battled blazes that have burned for at least two hours. Two occupants of the home where the plane crashed apparently survived, though they were sent to the hospital.

State and regional authorities are already investigating what brought down Flight 3407. The plane was a twin-turboprop De Havilland DHC-8-400 Dash 8. Impact was approximately 10:15pm ET, right before the scheduled landing. The crash was about seven miles from the destination.

[Times, CNN]

UPDATE: Keith Burtis, a Best Buy community manager, lives in the area and posted one of the first Twitter messages about the crash. He's been talking to Fox News; hear his account of the crash in the clip up top.

A neighbor, meanwhile, took some footage of the home after it was hit by the plane and uploaded it to YouTube:

News of the crash apparently surfaced on Twitter much more quickly than on cable TV — you can drink from the firehose here, a sampling is below:

UPDATE 2: CNN is reporting on a tape of air traffic controllers before and during the crash. In the tape, the crew reports no problems and shows no sign of emotional distress. The plane was outside of a navigation marker and was to get back on course. Then the controllers can no longer reach the plane:

Another plane in the area reported issues with rime icing, so people are speculating (on CNN at least) on whether that brought the plane down.